Page 8 of Ghost With the Most
“So,” she said finally, setting the cup down with a click that echoed louder than it should have. The sound rang through the air like a tiny gavel, an elegant little punctuation mark on her performance. “You say you’re here to move him on.”
“That’s the goal,” I said, careful not to sound too optimistic. I kept my tone low and even, like a poker player sliding chips across the table. “But I can’t do that unless I know why he’s still here.”
Meredith leaned back, the silk of her blouse whispering against the chair. Her expression didn’t shift, but her gaze sharpened just slightly, a predator’s flicker beneath the debutante mask. “I don’t believe in ghosts, Miss Hearst. And if I did, I’m not sure why Beau would choose now to show his face. But I do believe in closure. If your presence helps put the rumors to rest, then by all means.”
The line was rehearsed, a little too polished to be casual. Her words might’ve been about closure, but her body language screamed containment. I watched the way her fingers stayed laced in her lap, perfectly still, as though one twitch might give her away. She was a woman trying to control a narrative that had already slipped its leash, and I could smell the tension beneath her gaudy perfume.
And just like that, I was being invited into a dance where every step had already been choreographed. But I’d danced with ghosts many times before, both the kind with heartbeats and the kind without. People assumed the dead were the liars, the manipulators. They never expected the medium to have a bluff of her own. What Meredith didn’t know was that standing between worlds taught you to read tells like tarot cards. And if I had to, I could out-bluff a ghost, a grieving widow, and a courtroom full of attorneys without breaking a sweat.
She sipped from the teacup. Bone-white and faintly translucent, it smelled faintly of bergamot but also underneath that, something floral and bitter. Belladonna, maybe. Or just really expensive rosehip.
“Were you and Beau close?” I asked, watching her.
“We were married.” Meredith sipped, her eyes watching me over the rim like a panther pretending to be disinterested.
“Wedding rings don’t always equal intimacy,” I pressed.
She smiled, slow and sharp, like a fox among the hens. “It burned hot and brief, like some romances do. Nothing about Beau was practical. He was charming, ridiculous, and entirely too much for his own good. But harmless.”
I tilted my head. “Harmless people don’t usually haunt funeral homes.”
“They do when they think it’s an encore.” She set her cup down with a soft clink, the sound as precise as a punctuation mark. “Beau loved being the center of attention. Alive, dead, or somewhere in between. This is just his final act.”
She made it sound so simple. So tidy. Like a man haunting his own funeral was a mildly embarrassing personality quirk, not a cosmic cry for help. But it was too neat, too polished. The way grief often gets trimmed when it doesn’t fit the social calendar. There was something too perfect about her stillness. Too sculpted, like she'd filed her sorrow down to the bone and sealed it with poise. She spoke in clean, deliberate words, like a woman telling a story she'd practiced in the mirror, over and over, until even the lies had lost their heat.
“Did he have enemies?” I asked, watching her carefully over the rim of my cup. The tea had gone cold, but I didn’t move. Neither did she.
Meredith chuckled, but the sound was brittle, like dry lavender crumbling beneath careless fingers. “Darling,” she said, her smile a touch too sharp, “this is Assjacket. Everyone has enemies. Especially if you're beautiful, rich, and prone to seduction. And Beau…” Her gaze slid out toward the garden as if his ghost might still be lounging somewhere under the hydrangeas. “Beau had all three going for him, and he knew it. But someone who hated him enough to kill him?” She shook her head slowly, the gesture languid and dismissive, like the idea itself was quaint. “That takes passion. The right kind of hate has teeth. That kind? You feel it in the marrow.”
“Any suspects come to mind?” I asked, my voice even, deliberate.
Her eyes didn’t flicker. Not even a twitch. Her expression stayed perfectly neutral, Southern charm polished to a high, strategic shine. “Not that I’d name,” she said smoothly, reaching for her teacup with the calm of someone who’d practiced holding her cards close for a very long time.
I nodded, letting the quiet bloom between us like fog. Slow. Smothering. Long enough to make her shift in her seat, just once. She didn’t like silence. “You said you hadn’t seen him for several days before his death,” I said, keeping my tone light, conversational.
“Yes,” she replied crisply, folding her hands in her lap. That single syllable was airtight.
I tilted my head. “From what I can tell, his spirit was anchored within hours. He was already attached to the funeral home before he died.”
Meredith blinked. Just once. But in a woman like her, that was enough. Her shoulders tightened, a subtle shift masked by elegance. One hand drifted back toward her teacup not to drink, just to hold. A distraction. A shield. When she spoke, her voice was too light, too amused. “Maybe he just liked the decor.”
I didn’t smile. I didn’t blink. But something inside me settled, low and certain. That blink wasn’t a tell. It was a warning.
The air between us had thickened, and my gut (a reliable, cranky instinct) began to buzz. She was hiding something. Whether it was guilt or pride or just the need to control the narrative, I couldn’t tell. But something didn’t add up, and I hated liars.
A loud clink echoed from the hedgerow, followed by a distinctly Zelda-flavoured curse.
I excused myself with a murmured apology and rounded the corner to find Zelda crouched in a decorative herb patch, an edging brick in one hand, and her other actively gnawed by a garden gnome. A real one. Two more had come to life nearby. One had started pelting us with gravel, and the third had mounted a topiary deer and was waving what looked like a pair of Meredith’s underwear on a stick like a battle standard.
“What the actual?—”
“I was just trying to test the local ley line flux!” Zelda yelped, smacking the bitey gnome with the brick. Stunned, he released his jaw and Zelda yanked her hand back. “But apparently these little creeps are enchanted. I may have accidentally awakened them.”
One of the gnomes made a shrill battle cry and headbutted her shin. “Ow!” Zelda growled.
“Stop. Animating. Things!” I hissed.
“I didn’t mean to!” she barked back. “They’re very sensitive!”
